Chapter 36

36

T hey pull off at an abandoned rest stop right after sunset, when the sky still glows faintly dark blue, and snow drifts crunch underneath Delina's boots.

By now, she's heard of a thousand different ways to break runes and heard the cat meow about as much, so she bounces on her toes once out of the car.

There's an ache in Maison's shoulders, but he holds his face carefully impassive as he shakes his hands out. Chloe's head is pounding from the passports, and Gurlien is about to tear his hair out at how slowly Delina's learning.

The need to do something she's actually good at itches underneath her skin.

"Death practice?" she asks Maison as soon as he confirms there's nobody else at the rest stop, nobody hiding in the bathrooms. "There's a deer about ten feet into the woods."

"Good lord," Gurlien mutters. "Can't remember a rune larger than a penny, can pinpoint a dead deer in three seconds."

"Put it into a spreadsheet, maybe I'll remember them that way," Delina snips back, and to her horror, Gurlien looks like he's actually considering it.

Maison coughs out a laugh, before turning around and facing them. "I once put the bill paying rotation into a spreadsheet so she'd pay attention, and it worked."

"Only after I completely redid it," Delina shoots at him. "It was horrible."

Gurlien covers his mouth with his hand for a brief second. "You know, occasionally I forget that you were just completely normal."

"Rude," Delina says, before glancing up at Maison.

Maison's jaw twitches despite the joking, but he exhales out his nose, reaching out and letting his hand rest on Delina's arm.

"I'll command you not to hurt me immediately," Delina says, leaning into the touch, into the comfort.

It's only been a few hours since she saw him.

"Command me to do something specific this time, too," Maison says, shaking out his hands again, and it's enough permission that Delina ventures off the little pathway, directly towards the dead deer pulling beneath her gut.

It's been dead for a while, half its rib cage gone, broken off by scavengers, and the eyes have rotted out of the skull, but the thread of gold remains the same.

There's snow in its chest cavity, pillowed and soft against the remnants of its lungs. One of its legs is snapped, from before it died, crumpled beneath it.

It's so involving that Delina barely hears Maison tromp up behind her until he rests a hand on the small of her back.

"It broke its leg then starved to death," Delina informs him, and he twists his face. "I wouldn't want to try to bring it back, it'd be too much."

"Yeah, definitely don't do that," Maison grumbles, but the hand on her back is gentle. "I want to see you actually pull it."

She quirks an eyebrow at him. "Last time you sprinted outside in your socks." But at his slightly embarrassed shrug, she crouches down next to the deer, poking at the frozen skin.

Bugs had long ago crawled over it, sending phantom prickles across Delina's arms, but instead she just breathes out, focusing on that single thread of gold, until it twists its way into her hand, falling into her palm like links of a chain.

Maison flinches, but the red in his eyes flash as he's watching her. "That's insanely spooky," he tells her, then shakes his head at her grin. "You're going to scare the shit out of people in Toronto."

"Good," Delina says, then spreads the magic between her hands. It's more than the dead bird, scalier, warmer. Less happy to see her.

"Objective is to control Maison enough to blow up a tree," Gurlien says, as if it's a completely normal sentence. "Don't tell him which tree, just use your willpower."

Maison rolls his eyes, the hint of a dimple appearing, before he holds his hand out, and despite all his bravado the tremble is back in his arm.

Delina cocks an eyebrow at him, much like she did earlier that day, and he nods.

"You're not going to hurt me," she declares, quickly looping the magic around his wrist and—

He clamps down his hand on hers, but no gold flash echoes in the woods around them.

"You're good," Delina whispers, and his eyes reflect the light back to her, startling so as he searches her face, the sense of his body being off bugging at the back of her mind. "See?"

She reaches her other hand out, cradles his face, and he exhales, his eyes wide.

"You're beautiful," he whispers back, his voice breaking, and in between one breath and the next, he teleports away, behind a tree, then appears behind her. "Why—"

"Stop teleporting," Delina whispers, and he stops, immediately, turning back to her, and the hair on the back of her neck raises. "We'll work on that later."

"Okay, he disappeared again, that's still spooky," Gurlien speaks up, and for a split second Delina had forgotten all about the two of them. "Everything good?"

"Yeah," Maison says, before shaking his head the moment they don't hear him. "Oh this is weird."

"He's fine," Delina calls back.

In the twinkling dusk, where the setting sun settles softly on the snow, Delina watches Maison with sharp eyes as he draws in a breath, like testing the very air around him.

His throat bobs as he swallows, before he focuses back on her, his eyes narrowed.

"I can tell that other demon took from you," he says, voice carefully controlled, and Delina raises her eyebrow at him. "That was days ago, why can I still tell?"

He stalks close to her, and a shiver goes down her back, but she lifts her chin instead of reacting.

"She doesn't get to touch you again," he breathes, and there's almost something akin to a growl behind his voice.

That's new.

Delina's other eyebrow joins the raised one. "Noted."

"I mean it," he warns, and she believes him, though her heart kicks up a beat. "I'll kill her if she does."

Considering he wanted to help her back at the bar, it's an…interesting change of heart, and her stomach tightens.

"Obviously," she says, and finally, there's a twitch of a smile against his lips. "I don't want that either."

There's a long moment, where he stares at her, his eyes flickering over her face, like he's tracing a thousand different things over her skin, before Chloe clears her throat and they both startle.

Both Chloe and Gurlien give her matching, profoundly uncomfortable expressions. The cat sits languidly in Chloe's arms, like it has absolutely zero issues being held through the forest.

"The tree?" Chloe asks, and Delina's not entirely certain how much she's able to perceive, how much of the back and forth.

Maison steps back, shaking out his hands, even though he's not feeling any discomfort. "Just willpower, no verbal," he says, like he's reminding himself more than her. "Just instinct."

Gurlien had repeated it in overwhelming detail during their drive, and Delina's fairly certain she has the concept down, but it's…different. With Maison like this, so obviously in the palm of her hand, invisible to everyone else and yet brimming with power.

She inhales. That's what it is, that's what the off sensation of his body is. He's full of power, overflowing with it, bleeding into the ground below him and the forest floor, over the dusting of snow and the moss, the dead leaves, the dirt and the worms and the decay.

And she, in theory, should be able to control it.

Maison's face twitches, like he could absorb her thoughts and experience them as well like this.

Who knows, maybe he can.

Before she can psych herself out, she lets her eyes fall on a tree. There's a bird's nest on it, empty and cold, and the sap moves sluggish through the core of the wood. Frost glitters along the needles, weighed down by the snowfall.

So she reaches out through the nebulous tether between her and Maison, and he jerks in response, like she grabbed him with a brand and…points.

He jerks again, and the tree explodes.

Just explodes, showering them with splinters too small to hurt, needles flying everywhere. The snow, so previously weighing down the branches, powders through the air, catching the dying rays of the sun and shimmering.

For one beautiful, heartbreaking moment, it's perfect. Just power and carnage and…hers.

The cat yowls in Chloe's arm, and pain blooms in the back of Delina's mind as he digs his claws into Chloe's shoulder. Gurlien grabs Chloe, pulling her back with his bad hand, sending an ache down his wrist.

And Maison's still, so perfectly still, like he's been carved out of the very stone underneath the dirt.

"You okay?" Delina calls back to Chloe and Gurlien, but none of the trees hit them, just a small dusting of sawdust coloring their hair.

Both their eyes are wide, panicked, but Gurlien nods, swallowing.

"And you?" Delina asks, but Maison's motionless, as if he's not even breathing, his eyes full of light. "Maison?"

There's a beat, a moment, before he stirs, blinking, his lips parting.

"Is that what it's supposed to feel like?" he asks, wonder behind his voice. "Is that…"

"No idea, are you okay?"

He blinks over to her.

"Any other tests needed?" Delina asks, the back of her neck prickling once more. There's something wrong here, some sort of danger she's not fully realizing, and despite the hours spent in the car, she's itching to get back to relative safety.

Gurlien opens his mouth to reply, then closes it, shaking his head.

"Okay, Maison," Delina turns back to him, and he's so still another shiver goes up her neck. "Time to go; something's wrong."

He tilts his head at her, and the single motion is inhuman.

"Okay," Delina breathes, and he reaches his hand out to her, all at once a familiar and so foreign of an action. "Maison…"

The hand reaching out to him is the one she tied the death around, so she lets her fingertips trace on that golden ribbon on his wrist, and he shivers.

"You're not in danger," he says, voice almost disgruntled, and it, at least, is familiar.

"You can tell right now?" Delina asks, and he inclines his head in a single nod.

"Nothing here will harm you."

She narrows her eyes at him, still letting her fingertips rest on the golden chain, which twists under her touch, almost responding to her in the chill air. "Is this," she starts, and even with that little contact, goosebumps raise on his arm, "something to do with that bond?"

They still hadn't really talked about it.

"Yes," he says, voice low, and she believes him.

Before his breath hitches, and his hand clamps down on hers.

Around her, the world alights ablaze, his power a brutal red, so bright she can't see anything else around them.

She gasps, the air ripped from her, but…

Other than her heart pounding, she's fine.

She takes a moment to breathe, to calm herself, before she tilts her head back up to Maison.

An expression of intense concentration filters over his face, his eyes narrowed, like he's listening to a wind that only he can hear.

"What is it?" Delina whispers, as if the very magic around her can eavesdrop.

She can't see Gurlien and Chloe, can't hear them, nothing.

Maison's hand gentles on hers, before his eyes flicker down to her, reflecting the light back to her.

Quicker than it happened, the magic falls away, revealing the twilight forest. In a perfect circle around them, all snow and frost is melted, the very pine needles steaming.

He exhales, a slow, controlled sound. "She did another scan," he says, voice remote. "I masked us."

Delina blinks out at the circle around them.

"Alrighty," she says, then slips her finger underneath the rope, untying it with a jerk, and the coils slink off his wrist, slipping into the forest floor.

Maison jerks, blinking hard, and all the normal sensation she gets from him floods back in one motion.

She takes a step back, letting him shake himself back into his body, letting his eyes track over to the destroyed tree, before back to her a little wild.

"That was you masking me?" Delina asks, after a long moment of him staring dumbly at her.

"I…" he shakes himself again, like ridding a particularly strong thought from his mind, before he rubs his face. "Yes. They had her looking for demon activity. Generic scan." He looks past her, at Gurlien, his face grim. "They have that demon doing blanket scans right now."

Gurlien and Chloe glance at each other. "Did they find us?"

"She felt there was a demon here," Maison glances down at Delina. "I showed I was alone."

It's all very remote, all very far away, but still, Delina shivers.

"Congrats, you certainly were able to destroy the tree," Gurlien calls, now gripping Chance hard as the cat tries to wiggle its way inside his jacket out of fear. "Feeling better this time?"

Maison tears his eyes away from Delina, still shell shocked.

"Well, he didn't hurt her this time," Chloe says, and she has a fresh rip in her sweater from the cat. She picks at it idly, but her eyes are still sharp. "No gold flash or anything."

Maison exhales forcefully. "No, I didn't."

Delina can't tell, not quite, how he is, now that his nerves are jangling and his eyes are back to normal, and with a sinking feeling she realizes that it might take years to figure it out. Years to fully understand what he's going through with each magic change. With each step into a power system that's been held away from him by the very nature of his biology.

So she tucks herself underneath his arm, pulling him away from the destroyed tree, from the spot of the scan.

He flinches at her sudden touch, before draping his arm around her shoulders, letting himself be steered away, though he cranes his neck to see the remnants of the tree.